PPP's newest poll on the Massachusetts Senate race finds it dead even, with Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown both at 46%....

Brown's numbers have experienced a bit of a resurgence in the last few months. His approval rating is back over 50%, with 51% of voters approving of him to 38% who disapprove....

Brown is conveying the sort of centrist, independent image he'll need in order to win this fall. Only 34% of voters think he's too conservative to 48% who say he's ideologically 'about right.' And 49% say he's been an 'independent voice for Massachusetts' to 39% who say he's been more a 'partisan voice for the national Republican Party.' ...

Some of this resurgence is traceable, no doubt, to the warm-fuzzy ads that have gone into heavy rotation on Massachusetts TV recently.

In one called "Dad" released June 11, [Gail] Huff [Brown's wife] said that Brown would "get the girls up, get them fed, get them dressed, get them off to school" because of her own busy career as a reporter. In another, called "Husband," Huff said Brown "encouraged me professionally...to have my own life, to have my own identity."

The ads work -- and Brown simply doesn't radiate that meaner-than-a-junkyard-dog affect that's so popular with GOP pols these days. So he's going to be tough to beat.

Thus, Warren is punching up. And why not? It's not a distraction for Warren to bring up Romney. After all, what's the danger of having Scott Brown remain in the Senate? It's that Brown will help rubber-stamp the Romney agenda, which is the Paul Ryan agenda and the Grover Norquist agenda and the Sheldon Adelson/Koch brothers agenda.

Why shouldn't a Democrat run against the Republican Party? The party's the problem. And Republicans do this all the time. Every Republican runs against Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Many of them run against Jimmy Carter and Barbara Streisand and Jane Fonda and Michael Moore and George Soros and MSNBC and college professors and kids in lower Manhattan running drum circles. The right has made its base believe we're all one hydra-headed beast. The Republican right is one hydra-headed beast -- it acts much more in lockstep than our side does, on issue after issue -- so why not run against it?